Der Führer ist Judenote
This is the story of three men named Adolf. Each one lived a very different life, but they were bound together by a single twist of fate...
An epic story of war, friendship, and betrayal from the God of Manga himself. Spanning approximately half a century, from the Berlin Olympics to the then-present of The '80s, focusing primarily on the years leading up to World War II, Adolf is by turns a Coming of Age Story, Spy Fiction, Romance and a fairly well-done Author Tract about the evils of war and racism.
One thing that makes Adolf fairly unique is that, despite having only one name in the title, it has three title characters. They are Adolf Kaufman, the son of a German diplomat and his Japanese wife; Adolf Kamil, the Japanese-born son of a pair of Jewish German expatriate bakers; and some art school reject with a funny mustache.
Apart from the three Adolfs, the story revolves around a man named Sohei Toge, a Japanese reporter sent to Germany to cover the 1936 Olympics only to find his younger brother, Isao, murdered by unknown parties at the same time. Determined to avenge his brother's death, Sohei realized that Isao has managed to discover a secret, so terrible that it might shatter Nazi Germany's reputation and integrity...
What follows is a vast string of conspiracies hellbent on retrieving that secret from Sohei himself, where said secret will also entangle the three Adolfs in a single twist of fate that they never expected.
Another interesting part is that, unlike most WWII stories you're probably familiar with, it gives an intimate look into the daily lives of people in the Axis Powers. Tezuka himself lived through the war and many of the later chapters were based on his own experiences with dodging American incendiaries as a lad.
It was published in English by Cadence Books and Viz for a time but was out of print for a while. There is also an English Scanlation floating around on the internet, though of questionable quality. Vertical released a new translation in August 2012 under the title Message to Adolf.
Adolf provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: Kaufman discovers documents that prove Hitler's Jewish ancestry. Just as he's about to destroy them, he is informed of Germany's surrender to the Allies and Hitler's suicide. After realizing he's just wasted a good portion of his life going after a bunch of worthless papers, he starts laughing and then breaks down sobbing.
- Art-Style Dissonance: This story is drawn in Tezuka's usual cute, caricature-prone style despite its extremely dark and serious tone.
- Artistic License – Religion: Adolf Kamil tells Adolf Kaufman that in order to be a Jew, he needs to praise Jehovah. Even though Jews never use God's name. They usually write his name as "G-d". This is done to make sure that they never take his name in vain, so Kamil pronouncing it that casually is very strange. But then, it would be fairly in character for him not to pay much attention in Hebrew School.
- Berserk Button: Adolf Kaufman hates other people referring to his Japanese mother as a geisha and always blows his top when they do. Even if it is Hitler himself saying it.
- Big Brother Instinct: Toge's whole motivation is finding the murderer of his younger brother. He rapes Rosa when he finds out she betrayed him to the Nazis.
- Bigot with a Crush: Adolf Kaufmann (who is in the Hitler Youth) falls in love with Eliza Gutheimer, a Jewish girl his age (they both have Asian ancestry, however).
- Bittersweet Ending:
- For Toge, it is sweeter: He survives the war, albeit having gone deaf and with permanent nerve damage in his arm. Yukie, his first love in a while, ends up dying in the war, but not before giving birth to a new daughter. Toge quits the newspaper business, embittered by the oppression he suffered during the war, but goes on to work in the restaurant industry. Also, Mieko and Okei survived the war as well, which means that Toge can continue his relationship with some of the people that he came to care of during his tribulations.
- For the two Adolfs, their story is a lot more bitter, borderline Downer Ending. Their friendship never recovers from the war. Kaufman, after becoming an international fugitive, joins the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Adolf Kamil and his family move to Israel. Kamil, out of revenge, murders Kaufman's Palestinian family. The two confront each other for the last time, and Kaufman ends up dying to Kamil. Kamil survives with his family to see the end of the war, but according to the records has committed genocidal massacres of Palestinians and is killed in a Palestinian attack.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Yukie is rendered a vegetable in an air raid, but lives long enough to give birth to her and Toge's daughter.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Rather unusual for a WWII story, though not exactly surprising, considering where it came from. Though the forces of Japanese militarism and Nazism are unquestionably vile, the Allies don't come off too well, either. FDR knowingly sends hundreds of sailors to their deaths as part of a Batman Gambit and after that, we only see the Americans as the Japanese civilians did: a faceless boogeyman periodically raining fiery death on the heads of soldiers and civilians alike. And then there's the whole Arab–Israeli Conflict bit at the end...
- Toge is probably the character the reader most likely relates to, however, he did rape Lampe's daughter in retaliation for his brother's murder.
- Black Bead Eyes: Ms. Ogi, the schoolteacher. This is curious in that she's not a background character, indeed she's very important to the plot, and then her fairly simple design contrasts with the other more realistically drawn characters.
- Boomerang Bigot: Hiter despises Jews and wants to wipe them out despite having some Jewish blood himself.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: During Adolf Kaufman's first date with Elisa, a couple of his Hitlerjugend fellows secretly follow him with a camera. One of them complains that they can't tell what Adolf was saying to Elisa because speech bubbles don't appear in pictures!
- But Not Too Foreign: Adolf Kaufman is half-Japanese. Elisa is also part Asian, having some Chinese ancestry.
- Chekhov's Skill: The fact Toge was a star athlete in college comes in quite handy considering he spends about half the manga running away from spies who are trying to kill him.
- Chick Magnet: Toge runs into a lot of potential love interests before settling down at the end of book three.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Toge, Ms. Ogi and many others experience it. Well, it's Nazis we're talking about.
- Complexity Addiction: During the confrontation with Toge on an island, Lampe could easily have shot him, but he wanted him alive to torture him and perform horrible experiments on him. Lampe then gets startled by a flock of seagulls, allowing Toge to shoot him instead (he gets better, however).
- Creative Sterility: Hitler believes the Japanese have this problem and they can only progress by aping "Aryan" culture.
- Creator Cameo: Osamu Tezuka as a taxi driver.
- Dated History:
- Much of the plot revolves around the largely discredited notion that Hitler's grandfather was a Jew.
- The old chestnut about Roosevelt knowing about Pearl Harbor in advance makes an appearance.
- Death Bed Confession: Herr Kaufmann, Adolf's father, confesses to his wife of having murdered a geisha carrying the documents about Hitler's Jewish ancestry, right before dying.
- Death March: In 1944 Adolf Kaufmann (an SS officer) supervises a death march of concentration camp inmates who are being taken further into the Reich's remaining territory; he's told to ensure that a percentage don't make it.
- Defecting for Love: Subverted massively with Adolf Kaufman and Elisa's relationship. Elisa thinks he's horrible for wanting to destroy her race and only wanting to save her because he has a hard-on for her. She only goes along with it at the insistence of her scheming father who thinks having a Nazi in the family will keep the Gestapo from rounding them up. Things got even worse when they meet up again later on...
- Determinator: Again, Toge and Lampe.
- Dirty Cop: Inspector Akabane, who tortures Toge while interrogating him, makes sure he can't get work or shelter and sets fire to a junkyard all so he can get his hands on Toge's proof of Hitler's ancestry.
- The Dragon: Lampe to Hitler. Albeit he kills Hitler at the end.
- Dramatic Irony: Sure, Kaufmann was brainwashed by the Nazis into believing in the ideals of pure race, but Kamil does the same after World War II, becoming a soldier for Israel and starting to kill Palestinian people during the Arab–Israeli Conflict. He even kills his former friend's daughter and wife, but it is unclear if he already knew that his father was Kaufmann's first victim.
- He did know it, in the manga, from a Biography book about Kauffman. It is the first thing Kamil mentioned to Kaufmann when they met again for the finale.
- The biggest example is, of course, Hitler being murdered by Lampe for being of Jewish descent.
- Driven to Suicide: It's not too clear whether Rosa kills herself out of guilt over selling out her boyfriend to the Nazis or due to the trauma of being raped by his brother for it, but she's just as dead either way.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: After everything he went through, Adolf Kamil is unceremoniously killed off-screen by a random suicide bomber in a shopping district not long after he retired from the Israeli army.
- Eagleland: McCloud, the American spy Toge encounters, is a definite type 2: arrogant, uber-patriotic, belligerent, and racist.
- Ear Worm: Adolf Kaufman is tormented by the final song of a Jewish violinist he murdered.
- Face–Heel Turn: Adolf Kaufman used to be such a sweet kid...
- Kamil may or may not have pulled one as well. According to the PLO he was directly responsible for several massacres, but the only time we actually see him after the war's end is during his duel with Kaufman, so it's hard to tell.
- Foregone Conclusion: We know from the prologue that Toge will survive the war and that Adolf Kamil will be the last of the three Adolfs to die, which takes a lot of dramatic tension out of his climactic duel to the death with Adolf Kaufman.
- Fictionalized Death Account: Rather than committing suicide as in reality, Hitler is murdered by Lampe.
- Genre-Busting: Spanning approximately half a century, from the Berlin Olympics to the then-present of The Eighties, focusing primarily on the years leading up to World War Two, it is by turns a Coming of Age Story, Spy Fiction, Romance & a fairly well-done Author Tract about the evils of war and racism.
- Greedy Jew: While most of the Jewish characters are decent people, Elisa's father plays the part of the greedy, scheming old Yid to the hilt. The man sells out his own people by having business dealings with Nazi-affiliated companies, encourages his daughter to get into a relationship with a psychotic Hitler Youth member she doesn't even like because a party member marrying into the family would give him even more connections & eventually gets himself and most of his family killed because he didn't want to leave his cash behind when he fled the country.
- Groin Attack: How Toge usually deals with Akabane.
- He Who Fights Monsters: In his pursuit of vengeance against Kaufman, Kamil kills Kaufman's wife and daughter.
- Hitler Cam: Exaggerated to surreal effect during his big Nuremberg speech.
- I Will Wait for You
- Immigrant Patriotism: Adolf Kamil seeks to be accepted by his new homeland.
- Ineffectual Loner: Toge insists on handling the case himself and so refuses to give the information to any of the spies, who would perhaps make it, you know, really work. Highlighted by the fact that later he does decide to hand it over to a Soviet spy network anyway - but all too late.
- Irony:
- Adolf Kaufman starts out wanting nothing to do with Nazism, despite the demands of his father's Nazi associates. By the end of the story, he becomes so fanatical, he supports Hitler even when it becomes clear the war is lost.
- Adolf Kamil is generally a victim of Kaufman's descent into supervillainy. After the war, he murders Kaufman's wife and daughter, ignores this as he puts Kaufman down, and apparently goes on to commit genocide of Palestinians before finally getting killed offscreen, showing as little remorse for his actions as Kaufman did.
- Karma Houdini: Lampe just walks away after carrying out his final mission. Considering where he was, he was probably caught by the Allies soon after, but who knows...
- Large Ham: Hitler, of course. Tezuka often draws his facial expressions and body language in a rubbery, cartoonishly exaggerated manner to satirize his bombastic public speaking style.
- Lethally Stupid: Herr Gutheimer's poor judgment and misplaced priorities not only get himself killed, but most of his family as well.
- MacGuffin: Hitler's birth certificate and the Wagner statue it was hidden in. They never really explain how it wound up in there in the first place.
- Made of Iron: Apart from his athletic skills, Sohei can be surprisingly tough that not even Gestapo's interrogation methods worked on him, although those methods did almost managed to force Sohei to confess. The trope is in full effect again, though, when Sohei is arrested by the Kempeitai, as Sohei himself mocked the secret police that the Japanese Kempeitai's interrogation methods aren't as advanced as the Gestapo's!
- Mighty Whitey: Adolf Kaufman fulfills this trope on many levels. He rises quickly through the SS despite being half-Japanese. Tezuka attempts to justify this by having Hitler take a personal interest in him as a way of trying to learn about Japan from him so he can understand his Japanese allies better. After the war, he takes refuge with a group of Palestinian fighters and ends up becoming one of their top men, though this does make a bit of sense considering his extensive military training. The fact that the man is a Nazi may or may not make this a very twisted, circuitous Lampshade Hanging...
- The Palestinian leader points out the irony of an ex-Nazi helping them in freeing Israel from the Jews.
- Milking the Giant Cow: Hitler's performance at the Nuremberg rally was already a real-life example of this, but the goofy Art Shift Tezuka uses for this scene cranks it up.
- Million Mook March: The original Nuremberg Rally features prominently in the first volume.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Toge starts out investigating the death of his brother, which leads him on a hunt for documents proving that Hitler has Jewish ancestry.
- Money Is Not Power: Gutheimer thinks his money and connections will spare him and his family from persecution. In the end, the Nazis don't care for wealth.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Kaufmann receives one from Toge after threatening him with a gun. At this point Kaufmann's really slipped into Smug Snake territory as a character and watching him get his ass kicked is tremendously satisfying.
- Less satisfying is the beating that Kamil receives from Kaufmann. Kamil confronts his former friend after finding out about his wife's rape. Kaufmann retaliates by beating Kamil unconscious with a club, further cementing his Face–Heel Turn.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. Toge gets shot in the shoulder, but never rests afterward: the wound becomes infected and he loses the nerves in his left arm, rendering it useless. One should remember that Tezuka graduated in Medicine.
- Perpetual Frowner: Lampe.
- Press Hat: Toge and other reporters have a note in their hats about being reporters.
- Rape as Drama: When Adolf Kaufman meets Elisa again in Japan, he rapes her out of his warped attraction to her.
- Red Scare: Another underlying theme, for example when Ms. Ogi's brother faked having her killed, because of rumors that she's a Communist, which could have all of the family expelled from the village and supposedly lynched.
- Reused Character Design: Like most of Tezuka's more "serious" works, very few of them are featured, though Lamp's performance here is widely considered his definitive role. Ham Egg also plays a fairly major role as the sinister Kempeitai Inspector Akabane, Duke Red is a Hungarian smuggler, Tawashi appears briefly as an ice cream shop owner and Marukabi Boon makes a rapid cameo as an old friend of Toge.
- Rule of Three: Toge meets three spies in a row after returning to Japan: A French spy, an American spy, and a Soviet spy. The latter two have some kind of history.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Inspector Yoneyama's. He hasn't got anything evil about him, though, he's just doing his duty.
- Seppuku: Col. Honda does an interesting solo variation on it, shooting himself in the head with his sidearm after making the cut rather than relying on a kaishaku to behead him.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Adolf Kaufman starts out as a nice young boy, but is gradually corrupted by his Nazi teachers. After murdering Kamil's father, he gradually sinks more and more into the Nazi ideology.
- Steel Ear Drums: Subverted. Toge goes deaf after nearly getting blown up during an allied bombing raid. He cries...happily because he considers himself lucky compared to others who have lost lives and limbs.
- Terrible Ticking: After Kaufman kills a Jewish violinist, he keeps hearing the man's violin playing in his head.
- Those Wacky Nazis in several forms (well, they have to be there).
- Too Dumb to Live: Herr Gutheimer not only thinks his previous collusion with the Nazis will save him once The Holocaust really gets underway, after Adolf Kaufman tries to get him and his family out of the country, the greedy moron comes back after he realizes he left all his money at home! Shame his idiocy got his entire family — save his daughter who went on ahead — sent up the chimneys with him...
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Kaufmann when he becomes a Nazi.
- Villainous Breakdown: Guess who.
- Adolf Kaufman also gets a big one. He starts hallucinating during his U-Boat trip, thinking the ghosts of all the Jews he killed have come after him. He gets better though.
- He gets a bigger one in the end when he eventually gets his hands on the secret documents proving Hitler's ancestry. Just before he's going to destroy them, he's informed of Germany's defeat and Hitler's death, which means that he basically wasted his life going after useless trash. He starts laughing and then cries.
- War Is Hell: The horrors inflicted upon civilians during wartime are a major theme, such as the deaths of many Japanese in Allied bombing raids and the massacres during the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
- Yakuza: Present as the important meaning behind a tattoo. Namely, Okei, the female bar owner who falls for Toge has one, signifying that anyone who harms her would have to face the wrath of her family. That said, some of her dialogue implies that she's not really Yakuza, she just lets people think she is.
